Angela Haczku, a leading researcher on environmental causes for airway inflammation, will receive more than $900,000 from the Tobacco Related-Disease Research Program to study chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and ozone, a toxic component of urban smog.

Adolescent and young adult cancer survivors who are African American, poor or have public or no health insurance are far more likely to suffer from coronary artery disease, heart failure or stroke later in life than non-Hispanic white cancer survivors.

UC Davis public health researchers are conducting a comprehensive assessment of the health effects of the Northern California fires in October. They are asking one person per household in Napa, Sonoma and other counties affected by the fires to answer an online questionnaire — called the UC Davis Northern California Fire and Health Impacts Survey — about their daily lives, property and health before the fires occurred and immediately afterward, along with their current situations.

After years of investigation, researchers at UC Davis, Johns Hopkins, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have discovered how the immune system might protect a person from recurrent bacterial skin infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus (staph). The findings, publishing online this week in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, open new doors to someday developing vaccines to prevent staph skin infections, which account for 14 million outpatient visits, nearly 500,000 hospital admissions and $3 billion to $4 billion in inpatient health care costs in the U.S. per year.

January 2018

A new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released today has concluded that there is a substantial unmet need for mental health services among veterans of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Efrain Talamantes, an assistant professor of internal medicine and an expert in advancing equity and diversity in the field of medicine, has been named an Emerging Scholar for 2018 by the publication Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

Research led by experts from the UC Davis schools of medicine and nursing has identified gaps in pain-related education for health care providers that leave out important aspects of safe and effective pain management competencies, including those specific to opioid safety. These findings, said the researchers, may help explain one reason for the current public health crisis of inappropriate pain management and prescription drug abuse.

When fires ripped through suburban subdivisions in Santa Rosa last October, they may have done more than reduce homes to ashes. By incinerating all kinds of materials — insulation, electronics, furniture, cleaning products, pesticides — at very high temperatures, they could have created unknown or previously unrecognized health hazards in the smoke and ash. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, are trying to figure out just what is in that ash and air.

In a commentary published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, UC Davis researcher William Murphy expressed cautious optimism about efforts to genetically engineer hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to temporarily resist cell death during transplantation. While these gene therapy approaches could dramatically improve patient outcomes, Murphy argues that their risks must be carefully studied in diverse animal models.

December 2017

Ophthalmologists’ use of electronic health records (EHR) systems for storing and accessing patients’ medical histories more than doubled between 2006 and 2016, while their perceptions of financial and clinical productivity following EHR implementation declined, a study published today in JAMA Ophthalmology shows.

Human and veterinary researchers at UC Davis and other institutions have shown that enhanced natural killer (NK) immune cells, combined with radiation therapy, can be effective against spontaneous osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in dogs. The research showed these NK cells homed in on cancer and reduced metastasis in the treated dogs, offering a potential immunotherapy against solid tumors. The study was published today in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer.

A study assessing the impact of medical marijuana laws (MML) on adolescent substance use has found decreased use of all substances among 8th graders, no change among 10th graders and increased non-medical use of prescription opioids and cigarette use among 12th graders, following MML enactment.

About half of new moms in California, including those with diabetes, do not receive critical follow-up care within three months after giving birth, a new study published in the December issue of the journal Contraception shows.

A microscope using ultraviolet light to illuminate samples enables pathologists to assess high-resolution images of biopsies and other fresh tissue samples for disease within minutes, without requiring the time-consuming preparation of conventional slides or destroying the tissue.